


I Looked to You As I Fell

by Suaine



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Comedy of Errors, Getting Together, M/M, Other, everyone is dumb when it comes to love, god loves soap operas
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-04-24 00:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19161955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suaine/pseuds/Suaine
Summary: The aftermath of the Apocalypse-That-Wasn't isn't all smooth sailing and has to deal with the fallout from Very Intense Events. Namely, feelings. Crowley is having them and doesn't really know what to do about it. For someone's sake, put him out of his misery.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a divine misheard lyric in Call Me Maybe, because that's just how I roll. This post-apocalypse work is all about Crowley having -3 as his emotional intelligence modifier. Also some stuff happens, re: the Big One.

The world didn’t end on Tadfield Air Base1 but it might as well have. Heaven and Hell were going to come for their wayward agents and despite Agnes’ hint about face swapping, Crowley had no illusions that everything would run smoothly. For one thing, he knew himself and what all he had to lose. Fear for something you loved was a powerful motivator and angels knew a thing or two about torture.2 Crowley would fold like a two-bit card shark if the right kind of pressure was applied, and he knew it.

For another thing, and this one was the real kicker, Crowley just wasn’t that lucky. Sure, he could technically infernally intervene his way out of any scrape, but the fact that he had to was a dead giveaway. Perfectly benign temptings turned into wars turned into destroying his favorite bar. It was, almost, as if evil truly did contain the seed of its own destruction. Almost. A part of him almost believed it, too.

It was the part shaped like a sigh, the part that let him speak to God and imagine that there was a time he would have been heard. Though another part knew that the problem wasn’t the hearing, it was the answering.

God had not spoken to anyone in six thousand years, including Gabriel and the Holy Murder Squad. That’s the only reason they were all still around.

Cooped up in his flat, Crowley watched Aziraphale-in-a-Crowley-suit trying to get the hang of his personality. They knew each other. Crowley had been watching Aziraphale for so many centuries, just taking it all in, that he could imagine his words, his mannerisms, maybe even his thoughts, under most circumstances.

“You are a very bad plant and you should feel bad,” Aziraphale half-heartedly scolded one of the small geraniums. Its leaves didn’t have the decency to so much as twitch in feigned terror.

Crowley sighed and leaned back in his throne. “We’re doomed.”

Aziraphale glared at him, snake eyes flashing. Crowley swallowed some kind of complicated emotion he had no time or desire to deal with.

+

Crowley had not seen Heaven since the Fall and, frankly, it was kind of disappointing. The bright halls and panoramic views barely concealed the fact that it was essentially an office building, exactly like Hell. Heaven simply had better branding. The murderous Angels all looked slightly different, with their gold applications and little flourishes, and it made Crowley wonder if he would stand out. He’d never seen Aziraphale look anything but himself.

Gabriel’s purple eyes absolutely were going to make Crowley laugh out loud and ruin the entire plan, but then Gabriel opened his holy mouth and Crowley’s urge turned to justifiable angelicide. No one talked to his angel like that. No one. If the Almighty were to appear from behind the big floaty globe and utter these words, Crowley would launch a second rebellion right in Her face. 

He was impressed with his self-control, all things considered. 

God, however, did not show up. Crowley was not disappointed. He hadn’t been this close to Her in six thousand years, but it felt like the whole lot of them were all an eternity away from Her light and grace. Whatever had happened back then, it must have been big. Someone had heard Her voice for the last time and did a right good job of pissing Her off. Probably Lucifer, that unholy wanker. 3

After the botched execution, things became incredibly awkward. It was the feeling of waiting on the same bus after a spectacularly bad date.

Uriel cornered him on his way Down. “I know why you did it, and it’s not very angelic.”

Crowley had given the last of his fucks about angelic politics all the way back in the column of hellfire. “Oh, uh, why did I do it then? Is it no longer angelic to love creation and try to preserve it?”

Uriel snarled, but didn’t touch him. Progress. “Our love is supposed to be pure, Aziraphale. Ethereal and remote. We aren’t supposed to dance, or eat, or fall in love the way humans do. It’s not proper.”

Crowley’s eyes widened. “Fall in love?”

“Don’t you dare play stupid with me here in these hallowed halls, Angel of the East Gate. I’m warning you. Angels have fallen for less.”

And with that, Crowley returned to Earth.

+

It was not true that God the Almighty, Creator of the Universe, and altogether terrible Poker player, had not spoken in six thousand years. She had spoken plenty to plenty of people. Death came over for Chess on the regular and She had had very interesting conversations with several of the recently deceased. She was, frankly, a little too interested in the minutiae of the human heart. She had not, personally, created Soap Operas but thought they were one of the more brilliant ways this black box experiment was shaping up.

At heart, She was a scientist, sure. Create something, test it, tweak, then rinse and repeat, until it was as close to perfect as it could be.

But as a mother, she just really wanted it all to work out for the best. She wanted her beautiful, flawed, terrible offspring to be happy and thrive and become better than the sum of their parts. But at some point, every mother had to let them make their own mistakes.

Which is why Above and Below had been running things without her guidance for six thousand years, so every cockup was a beautiful act of free will. Even if her darling children didn’t realize they had it. Aziraphale had given her the idea and it was delightfully appropriate that he was there now, exercising that free will as thoroughly as any human.

+

Crowley returned to Earth with a victory and a question. Aziraphale returned from Hell with the air of a child who had just played a massive prank to perfection. Crowley’s heart stuttered in his chest upon seeing him, and he couldn’t understand what it was that both hurt so much and felt so good. It was definitely related to the body he was in, for one. It was an essentially almost-human thing that lived in him because he had lived so long in this world. It was not, and here he cursed Uriel for good measure, very angelic. Or demonic.

Angels had fallen for less. He certainly had.

“So, seeing as you’re here, it looks like everything worked out,” and he pointed to the ground. “How was it, down there?”

Crowley had no love for his fellow demons, partly because they were all going to murder him, but mostly because he had loved them Before and followed them into despair. They had all once been angels and a part of him begrudged them the corruption of their former selves. Lucifer had been so beautiful, so strong, so much more radiant than anything else in the universe. To look at him now, to look at Crowley now, it was hard to see how anyone could love what remained.

And so the question in his mind was left unspoken. Who had Aziraphale fallen in love with? How could Crowley not have noticed? 4

It gave this whole celebration of the Not-End-of-The-World a slightly bittersweet taste, but wasn’t that always the way for a demon who liked the world, and his angel, a little more than was entirely allowed? Crowley was going to try and make the best of it, because that’s all anyone really could do with the things the universe threw at them. And he was going to be happy for Aziraphale and his beloved if it killed him.

Grudgingly.

And seeing that he was a demon, maybe there would also be a little bit of mischief. He had to make sure that whoever had stolen his angel’s heart, they were going to be good enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Not one of Crowley’s creations, that. The Americans were under Lucifer’s direct jurisdiction, pride and all. ^
> 
> 2 Heaven didn’t technically have blood on its hands, they were just really good at jumpstarting the human imagination when it came to righteous suffering. ^
> 
> 3 It had been Aziraphale, actually. She had not spoken to any of the angelic host after their conversation at the East Gate. Not even the Metatron. ^
> 
> 4 This, my darlings, is when God gets out the metaphysical popcorn. ^


	2. Chapter 2

The second day of the rest of their lives was much like the first, though as it was a Monday, it had special features that tended toward the infernal. Adam had put the whole thing back together exactly the way he had found it when his powers first manifested, so a bit of the world felt like a peculiar Wednesday, with the sort of hangover that leaked into Monday like an oil spill.

Crowley was early morning drinking in a casual way that had nothing to do with his feelings doing things to his insides. He just really enjoyed drinking… he looked at the bottle, frowned, and put it away. Whatever that swill was, Aziraphale would not approve of anything that had cuvée written on it in comic sans.

The reason why Crowley was in his flat punishing himself with his personal interpretation of bad wine was, of course, also angel-related. They’d spent most of the day together until, at some point last night, Aziraphale had looked at him with that odd, blushy gaze and sent him away. His exact words had been: “Oh, Crowley, dear. Look at the time. I suppose you really should be going now, shouldn’t you?”

And so Crowley had, thoroughly plastered still, walked out of the bookshop and all the way home. He hadn’t even said goodbye, just turned on his heels and walked out.

That was definitely the mature thing to do. Definitely.

Crowley barked at his plants for a minute and then slouched in his throne to watch terrible television. He flipped through Netflix in a stupor, exactly like hundreds of thousands of regular people, looking longer at the index than they actually spent time watching the thing. Streaming video was one of his greatest strokes of genius, giving the illusion of convenience only to trap people in a hell of mediocre choices.

He settled on a detective show that was, essentially, like any other detective show, but also had angels and demons in it. At least the inaccuracies were probably good for a laugh.

+

After five episodes it became very clear to Crowley that someone was playing a cosmic joke on him. The massive amounts of sex aside, Lucifer was basically Crowley with worse hair, and a detective instead of an angel.

He moaned in disgust as the counter let him know the next episode would start in twelve seconds. That was entirely too long.

Then, his door rang.

Last time that happened5 he had had to scrape demon guts out of his carpet. He steeled himself and walked over to the door, wondering if he’d somehow miracled himself an early lunch by diverting an unsuspecting pizza delivery man. Crowley rarely ate, but somehow his current state required grease and alcohol applied in the most unhealthy way possible. Could demons discorporate from heart disease?

He opened the door, prepared to put a little bit of fear in someone’s heart, just because he could. Crowley yelped when he saw who it was.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, all smile and angelic radiance.

“Ahhh,” Crowley yelled, and threw the door closed. He was backed up against the panel, somehow breathing harder than he should be. What had just happened? Why was he yelling at his best friend?

“Crowley?” Aziraphale yelled back, knocking on the door in that politely insistent way of his. “Are you alright? Crowley!”

Crowley took one, two, three deep breaths and artfully draped himself over the door frame. Then he opened the door again. “Yeah, uh, hey, sorry about that. What can I do for you?” His voice was a little higher than he liked it, but that tended to happen around the angel in general. No big deal.

Aziraphale smiled, though it did look a lot more confused now. Bamboozled, in fact. “I was just in the neighbourhood, and I thought, well, why not say hello. So, hello!”

Crowley blinked. “Hello, angel.”

Aziraphale began to frown. “Won’t you ask me to come in? I brought chocolate!” He brandished a selection of Belgian chocolate, handmade, that had the distinct air of being plucked from a shop in Belgium within the last three seconds. They, too, seemed bamboozled.

Crowley deflated, his heart doing that thing that it does whenever Aziraphale is particularly himself. “Of course, come in.” It’s not like Crowley had anything better to do.

+

You would think that, after 6000 years, they would run out of stories to tell each other. You would be wrong.

“Remember that chap in Russia,” Aziraphale said, slurring his words only slightly.

Crowley frowned, trying to remember what a Russia was. “Uh, big guy, large mustache?” This was a trick answer, at the time they’d been in Russia the last time it had been Russia, everyone had been a big guy with a large mustache.

“Yes!” Aziraphale exclaimed happily. Crowley smiled. “Wasn’t his name Boris? I think it was Boris. Very nice man, very polite.”

Boris, ah yes. Boris had been a revolutionary; young, beautiful, and utterly star-struck when faced with an actual divine presence. He hadn’t known it at the time, but his life had just been swept up in one of history’s bigger fuckups. It had been a bad year to stop by Petrograd for some vodka. There’d been a war on elsewhere, but Crowley had grown rather a bit tired of the brutality of it. It had been a different kind of war and since he had always been on about working at scale, Crowley felt that part of it might have been a little bit his fault.

“He was very politely trying to get laid, angel.” It had, frankly, been a little bit embarrassing to watch. 

Aziraphale looked at him, though not nearly as scandalized as Crowley would have expected. “You don’t say!” Was that… was that sarcasm?! Crowley sputtered, getting some of the much more expensive wine into his windpipe. Now that would be a way to go out, murdered by one’s own inability to swallow.

Aziraphale hesitated only a single second and then thoroughly and entirely uselessly slapped Crowley on the back several times. It did nothing to help with the wheezing coughs, but if it made Aziraphale feel helpful. Well.

“You knew?” Crowley wheezed out, reaching to steady himself with his left arm. Aziraphale was holding his right.

Aziraphale huffed. “You know, I’m not stupid. I can tell when someone is flirting with me.”

Crowley stopped coughing and turned to face the angel. He blinked sideways several times, the snakey bits taking over. He felt like every single word he would say next would come out as a hiss, so he chose not to say anything at all.

“Human beings are not very subtle about these things, my dear.” Aziraphale smiled and it broke Crowley’s heart. “Not like our kind, these humans. They’re so expressive.”

That’s probably how Aziraphale had met his love, just some human who’d taken a chance and been rewarded with some divine dicking. It had never occurred to him that it might be a human for some reason. Crowley felt like he was missing something, a crucial piece of the puzzle, something ineffable.

“Are you sure you’re alright, Crowley?” Aziraphale’s smile was slowly faltering, like a souflé that had been disturbed before it was ready.

Crowley put on his bravest face, the one he’d dragged out for the Apocalypse. “Yes, yes, just got something in the wrong pipe.”6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 5 It was yesterday. ^
> 
> 6 Boy, howdy, did he ever. ^


End file.
